Current exhibitions

Perpetual Uncertainty - art and radioactivity

Ken + Julia Yonetani, Crystal Palace: the great exhibition of the works of industry of all nuclear nations, 2012-16, Foto: Polly Yassin/Bildmuseet Umeå

Perpetual Uncertainty brings together artists from Europe, Japan and the USA to investigate questions of nuclear technology, radiation and the transmission of knowledge over deep time futures.

The artworks in the exhibition explore how nuclear technology has affected our perception of memory, knowledge and time. How can we understand the long-lived half-lives of radioactive isotopes? How can we communicate to people where our radioactive waste is stored 100 000 years from now? Is it even possible to imagine how the world will look then?

The exhibition gives a contemporary perspective on living in a nuclear economy, just seven years after the accident in Fukushima and 32 years after the disaster in Chernobyl. Today North Korea’s nuclear weapon tests remind us of the threat of nuclear war. At the same time, humans are starting to bury radioactive waste, which must be isolated from the environment for up to a million years.